Silverlight 3 coming to the Xbox 360 (updated)

None of the channels in TunerFree MCE use Silverlight? I hope we get Netflix on the XBOX 360 Media Center Extender however!

The only silverlight internet TV provider I know if is ITV, and since they also use wmv, which plays much better than silverlight video, I haven't got any silverlight video sources on there.

It would be good if Microsoft would be a bit more agnostic and support flash too though.

I am not sure that a “native mode” development platform like Silverlight within the Xbox “Dashboard-level OS” is accessible from within the Extender for Windows Media Center environment.  I believe that even the Windows 7 Extender architecture still limits that environment from accessing resources available on specific platforms, especially when it comes to interactive application-level services like those Silverlight provides.  Although different, it relates to the same reason you cannot play DVDs locally on the 360 when in the Extender experience.  The playback software needs to reside on the Host PC, not on the local box.  Where would the Silverlight code actually run – on the Host or on the Extender?  It is not like just adding a codec, it is a full runtime environment, much like WPF on steroids.

I am sure Microsoft took this into account when designing the implementation, but I am doubtful that, just because they bring out Silverlight support for the Dashboard environment, it will be available on Extenders.  Maybe there is something available with the new Extender SDK that changes the architecture, but I have seen nothing that indicates this is true.  I doubt that they could take advantage of the code they developed and optimized for the 360’s hardware architecture and processors and implement it on multiple platforms.  Time will tell, but I am not too hopeful that we are going to see Silverlight as part of the Extender for Windows Media Center experience anytime soon.

 =D-